France fears serial killer on the loose

French authorities said on Friday they feared a serial killer was on the loose after a gunman shot dead a 47-year-old mother near her home in a Paris suburb, using a weapon employed in three other killings in the same area within the last five months.

"This series of killings deserves our maximum attention and we are putting all our resources into this affair," Interior Minister Claude Gueant told Europe 1 radio.

In each of the four shootings, the first of which was in November, a lone gunman used the same 7.65 mm caliber semi-automatic pistol, prosecutors said. The latest shooting took place on Thursday when a gunman on a motorbike struck.

"It was a pistol, a semi-automatic pistol," said Marie-Suzanne Le Queau, public prosecutor in Evry, a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris. "This element alone is not enough to affirm at this stage that it is all part of the same affair."

There were obvious similarities in the way the latest three killings were carried out in February, March and April, but no clear link to the first killing in November, she added.

Around 100 investigators were working on the case and police were examining several leads, she said. The woman was a widow and had an 18-year-old son, Le Monde reported.

The motives of the murders remain a mystery, Le Monde wrote, as the last two victims appearto haveno connection with the first two and come from very different backgrounds.